Today's News,Friday,Feb.17
Declan Hill (author of "The Fix") was interviewed yesterday on Prime Time Sports on what current problems are happening with match-fixing in soccer. While he didn't say there was a problem in MLS, he said that some of the CCL matches are being investigated for match fixing. It doesn't seem that any MLS squads are implicated. A must-listen:
http://www.fan590.com/ondemand/media...16_181039_5204
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
The interview with de Guzman really emphasizes some things: (1) Our past manager was a joke (2) it really was the right decision to fire Preki along with Mo, something I had often wondered about (3) the current set-up is very professional.
A lot of people's opinions about the club were formed under the prior regime, that will take time (and success!) to change.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
I find it much more valuable, and enjoyable to read your comments on TFC articles. . than the articles themselves.Originally Posted by Oldtimer
Thanks mate.
NOTICE: Wager with STB: OVER 2 shots on goal in the First half wins a Pint at HT.
ha-ha. What's football but a game of opinions? Have a great day.I find it much more valuable, and enjoyable to read your comments on TFC articles. . than the articles themselves.
Thanks mate.
Last edited by Oldtimer; 02-17-2012 at 08:10 AM.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
I thought de guzman came across poorly in it but I've never been a fan since his first infraction at new england
I hate to say this but....for a guy who is doing a great job covering the team, Larson isn't a very good writer. His pieces are riddled with incomplete sentences, grammatical mistakes, and awkward inverted sentence structures. I hope he's just fooling around.... you can't make a career in journalism with a writing style that weak.
Also I hope someday we see Preki's side of the story. I'd be very interested in that.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
The one thing it emphasized for me was de guzman's complete inability to take any kind of repsonsibility. ooh, the club was chaotic, preki didn't have a clue, the fans are clueless rubes who didn't know what i was supposed to be doing and had totally unreasonable expectations.
fuck right off.
alright, if we go with the "fans expected you to be scoring goals and running the offence, which isn't fair" argument, I'd say no, most fans I think were hoping we might get what we saw in the 07 gold cup, but knew that you were more of a defensive midfielder, in which case, where's the fucking defence been so far mr DP DM?
the only time the defence has looked halfway decent was under the 'amateurish' Preki. hope you and dwayne had a good chuckle about that.
If he was constantly playing you out of position and absolutely terrible, then why when we got winter who "made things easier and more understandable for you" and played you where you wanted to play did we go back to looking like a complete shambles with the league's worst goal differential.
any responsibility to take for that at all? doesn't look like it to me, so if it's unrealistic to expect you to be the offensive star, and the best defence we've had was when you were being played out of position by an amateurish coach, then what exactly is it you're here to do de guzman?
"Fit and finally on the front foot, there’s no one else to point the finger at."
Oh he'll find someone, don't you worry, he's DP worthy when it comes to throwing people under the bus.
really hope he finally earns this shitty attitude with his on pitch play this year.
Oh, there are all kinds of things about the way this team was set-up and run for the first four years that would be intesting to get more info on.
agreed. maybe the current regime got him to step up, but my understanding of him in this article is paramount to him saying "i play better with a good coach and talented teammates".
if he was the best player on the pitch under the old system, that'd be one thing, but he wasn't, and many times he ranked middle or lower for people i'd want to see on the field.
again, if the team winter put together made him step his game up, fine, whatever. i just don't want to hear shit about him not playing to his full potential unless i could say i saw him play to his full potential two years ago. there's only one game, ONE GAME, i could say i saw that in, and that was the game after the one where he split the wall instead of blocking a free kick.
I'd be more interested in hearing the fan reaction to this being that it was certain players that were blamed for the divide in the locker room rather than the coach.
Preki being fired 9 months into his tenure does tell us what the team's thoughts on Preki were though.
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It's anoying, but most interviews with footballers seem to be like this pretty universally, from what I've seen. When a team is playing poorly, players point fingers and/or request a transfer. Far fewer shoulder their share of the blame, and resolve to be better.
But yeah - I think JDG looked improved over the course of last season, although still not quite earning that DP tag. If he's really that enamored with the new regime at TFC, then I expect him to take the blame if his numbers and overall play continue to sag this season.
- Scott
“Heroism breaks its heart, and idealism its back, on the intransigence of the credulous and the mediocre, manipulated by the cynical and the corrupt.” ~Christopher Hitchens
Seems to me both Preki and AW are stern task masters. The difference is Preki was compromised from the start due to his connections to MJ, whereas AW along with De Klerk have a lot more control over the professional environment at the club (with positive affect IMO). I thought the story on Avila was interesting in terms of showing how players are relating to the team management, talks about Avila working with Silva so he'll understand what is expected of him.
Preki's connection to MoJo had nothing to do with the problems in the lockerroom. Considering the fact by the end of the year MoJo and Preki hated each other and the players hated both of them speaks to a completely dysfunctional organization.
I'm probably one of the few who thinks DeGuzman has been a good player for us. Not a $1.8 million DP player mind you, but a good player. The drop in talent from him to our bench is very noticeable. It is not the same team when Dunfield is on the pitch, just to pick one example. I think people respond to the price tag more than really evaluating what he does on the pitch. Which is justifiable for sure, as he's clearly overpaid, bu he's still a very good player.
It makes me ill thinking how messed up things were, I'm sure there is a lot more to come out yet.
That's a really good point, Roogsy. From JDG's perspective, it seems like the problem was really with the coach.
... and didn't we later hear Preki's opinion on Canadian players? A lot of people here took Preki's statement at face value.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
The team wasn't big on Preki from very early on. I remember hearing rumblings in May about him.
I second this. In order to appreciate DeGuzman, you really have to be watching him off the ball followed by what he does with the ball once he gets it. He wasn't present in the first season and a half, but after that (mid-late 2010) he was all there.
I also agree that he isn't worth 1.8Mil. He's a 1.5 dimensional player. I think if he was getting paid the league max - $425 or whatever it is, people might see his value.
Last edited by jabbronies; 02-17-2012 at 10:34 AM.
Oh they almost immediately regretted bringing him on. Par for the course for this organization I guess.
You gotta be some special kind of screw up to make enemies days into your job, and I am not talking about just players.
Sure, and by then an organization that was desperate and clearly out of its depth. Well, at least the soccer guys were desperate, upper management wasn't worried about a thing (and maybe still aren't). Not a very good recipe for success. Glad it's changed.
yeah, and de guzman and de ro (only cos he was specifically brought up in the article) have never had a problem with any other coach have they? must be all down to preki.
when exactly did preki play de guzman as a striker? i certainly don't remember that but if anyone could tell me when it actually happened rather than we all juts take his word for it, that'd be cool.
Kurt larsun himself tweeted that de guzman's excuses were "something of a negotiating technique. I wouldn't concede any ground in a contract year" so let's not be taking all this as any kind of gospel truth, more it's about de guzman trying to make de guzman look good.
I don't get why this is an either, or situation. The coach is certainly responsible for a split locker room, a coach's main job is people management and if the people aren't getting along it's certainly a failure on their part. The GM is responsible for not assembling the right type of people. The players are responsible for not acting as professionals. Also there was a locker room divide long before Preki got there, and it lasted after he left, until the players unvolved were moved out. JDG was paid to be a leader, as was Dero on that club, and we expected other guys to show some locker room class as well. To me JDG placing all the blame on Preki is indicative of the sort of attitude there was that caused those problems. A rift between the "C'mon guys, lets get our shit together and work hard!" ppl and the guys who were like "We're doing our bit. not our fault our gm is a moron and our coach is an ass"
^ I remember Preki trying JDG as striker once. It was only in one game though, or part of a game even.
JDG does have no excuse at this point. If he doesn't play like a DP this year, he shouldn't be one.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
I think you are confusing fans and supporters. Realistically, supporters make up what, 10% of the folks that show up on game day? If you aren't in the supporters section and you listen to what folks are saying about DeGuzman, it was usually about the fact that he wasn't doing anything on the attacking side of the ball.
JDG isn't the type of CM that Preki wanted. He wanted destroyers in the middle. Half the time JDG was lined up either as a winger, or a hole player (AM), which he may view as a striker. There was 1 or 2 games where I recall DeRo lining up up top, with JDG behind him, and when that's technically a 4-2-2, that means he's a striker.
I think it was stupid that him and DeRo were essentially laughing at the coach, and yes his attitude doesn't seem ideal, but there are two sides to every story.
I think it can now be put to rest that Preki was the cancer, and really, took this team back all the way to an essentially expansion team when Winter showed up.
The interesting thing about both this interview with JDG and Mariners interview (both by Larson) is that both sides make it at least seem like they'd entertain the idea of a new contract at non DP levels.
If he continues his improvement from last year (or even stay at the same level), JDG back on a non DP would be an excellent thing.
Imagine if Anselmi had fired Mo at the end of season 3 like he should have, and brought in Winter at that point.
TFC had a solid team at that time, with some cap issues mind you, but with great talents like DeRo (not yet fed up with his contract issues), Guevara, etc. With just a bit of re-tooling, TFC could have been solid in year 4. The Preki experiment was an unmitigated disaster, because TFC ended up worse than an expansion team (because TFC still had cap issues and no wad of allocation money that new teams get). Whether that is 100% Preki's fault is beside the point.
I agree with the comments that JDG showed a bad attitude, however I'd cut him some slack because the contrast between Preki and the coaching at Depo must have been startling.
Last edited by Oldtimer; 02-17-2012 at 11:15 AM.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
Not trying to say JDG doesn't have a point about Preki effecting his play. Just that blaming Preki for the off field stuff is bs. Besides, honestly, with JDG's talent relative to the rest of the league I don't think Preki was being crazy or ridiculous trying him out at other more impactful roles. Especially considering our only real strength then was in the midfield. Sometimes a coach puts the team above a player. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
+1 to all this really, a very fair and nuanced view. Preki obviously pissed a lot of people off, no doubt about that, and for some players, he probably didn't help their game, again no doubt about that (whereas some players have never looked better than they did under preki). firing him was probably for the best given the amount of enemies he'd built. pissing of the higher ups was his big mistake as then players/coaches would know they didn't have to fall in line behind him, that management would have their backs instead.
That's always going to be the case with any coach though, that for some of the players it's not going to be a perfect fit. I'd suggest it's under those circumstances that a players character really shows, and de guzman doesn't make himself look good with his takes of chuckling away with dwayne.
Agreed
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